I have fond memories of the kids' TV show No. 73, but they're fairly vague ones, probably because by the time it finished, I was still only eleven years old. I remember celebrity guests, a quiz game with a sandwich-making gimmick, and having quite a crush on the young Sandi Toksvig.
I also remember Chris Sievey's comic creation Frank Sidebottom, who made regular guest appearances. At first I found his nasal voice and papier mache head creepy to the point of being hard to watch, but his relentless cheerfulness soon won me over. A decade or two later I reacquainted myself with his music, and I was charmed all over again.
It was with great sadness, therefore, that I learned of Sievey's death in 2010 - another part of my childhood had been lost forever. I was sad for a little while in the way that you are about celebrities for whom you've had a vague fondness, but life goes on and a thousand other interesting things captured my attention instead. I heard they were making a movie about him, but didn't think much about it barring making a mental note to see it at the earliest possible opportunity.
Frank isn't a straight-up biopic, however; rather, it's an updated reimagining of the true story of screenwriter Jon Ronson's time spent as the keyboardist in Sidebottom's band. It hauls events right up to the present day, where frustrated songwriter Jon Burroughs (Domnhall Gleeson) is walking through his seaside hometown in search of inspiration. Witnessing a commotion on the beach, he goes to find out what's going on, only to find that the individual trying to drown himself is a keyboard player in a band that has a gig that evening.
Even Jon himself isn't entirely sure how he lands up replacing the unfortunate individual, but it is this that earns him his spot in the Soronprfbs, along with Baraque, Nana, Don, Clara (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and the titular Frank (Michael Fassbender), who never removes his papier mache head. In the manner of pretty much every rock flick ever made, the rest of the movie concerns itself with the band's rise and eventual, spectacular fall.
The good
I've always had a lot of time for Jon Ronson, if only because he's responsible for teaching me that being a nervous wreck doesn't necessarily preclude the leading of a basically happy and fulfilled life. I love his books, and while I'm not sure whether The Men Who Stare At Goats was a good film, it'd take a very hard heart indeed to think it wasn't a good time. In Frank, he's constructed a trim, tidy piece of storytelling about some very untidy characters and he's made it look absolutely effortless. Funny and moving by turns, the film moves at a comfortable but brisk pace and ends at the exact right moment to provide maximum satisfaction.A lot of people have been raving about Fassbender's performance inside the head, which isn't surprising, as it's the sort of thing people do usually like to rave about. Certainly, he does a great job of making Frank talented and likeable, a plausible leader of what sometimes feels less like a band and more like a cult in miniature. It isn't a one-man show, however - Domnhall Gleason is a superb everyman who never entirely understands the consequences of his actions, while Maggie Gyllenhaal steals every scene she's in as the surly Clara, who almost certainly does.
Musically, Frank feels unusually authentic; it took Mr. Beaupepys to point out to me that this was because the majority of the cast play their own instruments, lending a genuine sense of immediacy that plays well in the midst of all the interpersonal chaos on screen.
All in all, this is a really neat, satisfying piece of filmmaking that I think anybody could probably enjoy.
The bad
You might have been sensing a but coming up in the previous paragraphs, and you'd be right.But, dammit, why does the film's structure have to depend so heavily on the Magically Mentally Ill? Some of us have to live with this shit every day, and all it does is poison our lives and exhaust our loved ones and piss all over our chances of attaining more than a passable imitation of an acceptable level of normality. True, some people with mental illness achieve miraculous things, but who's to say what they might have achieved without it?
By all accounts, Chris Sievey was as sane as a brick; would it have been so very hard to construct a narrative where his fictional counterpart was, too? As an added bonus, had this been the case we'd have been spared the sight of a half-bald, mumbling Fassbender doing what looked like some fairly transparent Oscar-baiting. Sure, it makes for a nice myth, but Ronson at least is smarter than that; I'm sure he could have come up with something less trite and almost certainly more interesting.
Bonus snipe: all those cute Twitter graphics are currently great for reminding us we're in the present day, but within the space of the next decade or so, I'd lay money on them making it look like a bit of a period piece.
No comments:
Post a Comment